Stukkend
by Novocain
Summary: Femmeslash. Drug use. 'It's really hard to tell if we win or lose,' Hermione would have said to the unlistening air if she had been sober. 'Sometimes we do both, or neither, and sometimes we just lose and never know it.'


_.:stukkend:._

**i: the killers are dancing**

_It's really hard to tell if we win or lose_, Hermione would have said to the unlistening air if she had been sober. _Sometimes we do both, or neither, and sometimes we just lose and never know it._

But she didn't remember who she hadn't said those words to before, and she wasn't sober. She was never sober anymore, not if she could help it.

No one whispered things like "Such a waste. She was such a talented, promising girl." None of her friends tore her eight-ball from her trembling, cocaine-deprived hands (took you too long to get the money together, didn't it? Perhaps you should ask Dean for a job at his club. He owes you. He owes you so much, and he knows what it is like to snap your own wand voluntarily and retreat to the mundane world - to be a Fled) or stared at her bony wrists and hips and the black circles under her eyes in worry. All of her friends were druggies as well - if one could call them friends. They were acquaintances, really - club buddies. Fuck buddies. The kind of people who would always lend her a straw, but never a line.

Well, one of them would. The girl. Angelina. The only human a sober Hermione turned her shattered mirror eyes (you reflect broken things, even broken horror, and you have nothing left to break. Aren't you a pathetic fragment of a human?) toward and spoke with, the ebony-skinned fellow Fled.

_It's really hard to tell if we win or lose,_ Hermione would have said to the unlistening air if she had been sober. _Sometimes we do both, or neither, and sometimes we just lose and never know it._

She wasn't sober, though, and the hazelbitter words died unborn. She carefully used a card and a dollar bill to grind herself another line, and the Valentine's Day pink (and you don't remember Lockhart and dancing dwarfs and embarrassing poems and a humiliated Ginny and ridiculous crushes at the sight of it - you don't) straw that the skinny boy tapping drumsticks on the scratched, worn table handed to her was swiftly used. Her nose burned as grains of pure euphoria were ingested, and she tilted her shorn head back and closed her eyes to relish in the disgustingprecious chemical taste of the drip.

It wasn't hard for her to tell she had lost, but she had always been such a talented, promising girl.

Her face went numb.

**ii: you didn't put up much of a fight**

Angelina was not a broken doll - one with button eyes torn off, unseeing, and cotton stuffing coming out of its seams - like Hermione. Drugs were nostalgic escapism for her. She liked to get out of her head in remembrance of Gred and Forge and lazy Quidditch days. Hermione remembered her face (you forget all the others, and you hope it is a sign that soon your hated memories will dissolve and slide down your throat, leaving behind only the chemical residue that will numb you lovingly) because she admitted it. Hermione knew that Angelina wasn't a broken doll, but they both knew that the former Quidditch captain was a weak one.

**iii: you broke too easily, but everything does**

When Angelina's pupils dilated and she began sniffing compulsively and her heart started pounding, she rambled. She talked and talked, all of it nonsense - ever so Lewis Carrollian and dancing the hokey-pokey on the line of madness.

Hermione, her eyes fevered and bright (the pieces of your soul are temporarily glued back together - your face is numb and so is your mind, your soul, your magic. You wish it would last forever, or you would if you were in your right mind and still believed in forever), would chatter back, and they would bounce insanity between them like a ping pong ball.

The night it happened was one of those dreamy nights when their pulses were racing (like a Killing Curse toward the fighting blur of a man on your right, and you didn't look away or stop curses from spewing out of your wand as Ron fell into a puddle, blue eyes as reflectory as the water) and their mouths just tried to keep up. Their hands waved, nails chewed and ragged, as they spoke, but their eyes stayed locked on each other, locked in transcendent communication and dreamdreamdreaming the way of the world in a fevered torrent of words voiced and unspoken.

It was the night that their frantic hands connected and their unused magic sparked. Words stopped abruptly, but their hands stayed in contact, and Angelina grabbed hold of Hermione's palm and pulled it in front of her face in a quick-dream trance, Hermione's fingers inches from her razor sharp cheekbones.

"Your life line -" Angelina started.

"- isn't there," the girl-who-was-vaguely-Hermione finished.

"But -"

"I'm not alive, am I?"

"You never believed in -"

"No, and I really should have because -"

"- it was a sign -"

"- of what was to come." Hermione closed her eyes as Angelina traced her nonexistent life line, trying not to let memories of the world she had left behind speed through her brain.

There was silence, strange in the speaking night, then -

"Trelawney would have gone into rapture if she had known."

And laughter (you laugh and it sounds like glass breaking - how can she stand it?) before Angelina kissed her palm. Their eyes locked on each other again, and they stared into dilated, unending tunnels of black.

It was an end, but perhaps Angelina didn't realize it, or perhaps she simply hoped for something magical - a miracle, an epiphany. She had long since lost the right to magic, though, so...

Hermione's hand was still held by Angelina's, and she used it to tug the girl forward. Their chapped lips met in a frenzy of knowledge - _do you/yes, you?/never/that's alright_ - and things like regret and pleasure spun in the air. Time wasn't something to be acknowledged, and they ignored it as skin met and contrasted coffee-creamer. Calloused hands slid over sharp hips and down, and Hermione's moans sounded like numbness to Angelina's ears. The woman stared into Hermione's brown-rimmed eyes until she closed them, and Angelina had already known but that didn't make it hurt any less. Hermione felt cold in the absence of Angelina's body against her own as Angelina licked her way down (she doesn't want to look at your eyelids anymore), but Angelina wasn't breakable and they both knew it.

Later, after they had snorted lines off of each other's stomachs (the cloud-white is beautiful against her skin, and you can see every lost granule and lick them away, savoring the bitter, noxious taste) and screamed together until they broke one of the couch springs, they stared at the ceiling fan with black eyes and listened to it creak, still naked and needing to move through the thick smell of sex in the air. Angelina wouldn't look at her, but Hermione had expected it the moment she had closed her eyes at Angelina's touch and listened to unbreakable Angelina's heart pause and remember: _do you?/yes, you?/never/THAT'S ALRIGHT_. She had listened to unbreakable Angelina' heart pause and realize: _no. no, it isn't alright._

Angelina got off the couch and pulled on her trousers, stuffing her black panties into the pocket before stepping into her shoes and tugging on her shirt. She walked to the peeling red door and said to it in an unreadable (to anyone except you) voice, "See you later."

Hermione listened to the door close softly, still staring at the fan, and let her eyes fall shut moments later at the sound of the thump Angelina made sliding down the wall of the hallway a few apartments down. She focused on the sound of the fan to drown out Angelina's quiet sobs and only sat up when her nose started bleeding. She grabbed a tissue off of the beat-up coffee table and stared at the blood that had dripped on her pale, naked thigh as she had leaned over.

"It's really hard to tell if we win or lose," Hermione said to the blood and the unlistening air. "Sometimes we do both, or neither, and sometimes we just lose and never know it."

It wasn't hard for her to tell she had lost, but she had always been such a talented, promising girl.

.:an ending:.

* * *

A/N: Addictive Passion requested a femmeslash with drug or food problems, and this is what came out. This was actually inspired while I was reading GeoFount's gorgeous Inu Yasha piece "A Game with Gods". Yes, you heard me - Inu Yasha. I truly hate the show and have ever since the second season when it started to blow hairy senior citizen balls, but GeoFount's work is phenomenal and magnificent. It's on my Favorites - go read it. Immediately. It's Souta/Kouga and indescribably bitter and gorgeous.

Yeah, so... title competition? The first reviewer to correctly guess the language and translation of the title gets to request a fic. (grins) Go for it.


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